THE OSPREY. 



53 



of September most of them have gone on, 

 thoug-h I have found the Red Phalarope on 

 the Massachusetts coast as late as middle Octo- 

 ber. Even when abundant off shore they are 

 seldom seen on land, or even close inshore. But 

 an easterly ti'dle. or at times a dense fog-, may 

 cause a sudden irruption o^ them for a short 

 time. The fisherman of Cape Sab e told me 

 that early one moining in August, 1894, after a 

 calm night of unusually dense fog, the shores 

 and flats were fairly swarming with the,se birds. 

 The fog soon lifted, and they were at once away. 

 With us they are emphatically ocean birds. At 

 Cape Sable they are known as "Sea Geese;" at 

 Chatham, as "Whale-birds.'" 



Other unique and interesting birds are the 

 Jaegers or Skuas. Their habit of securing food 

 by chasing the smaller gulls and terns, and 

 forcing them to disgorge, is well known. Yet 

 that for the most part they earn their own living 

 one can surmise as he sees them around the 

 fishing vessel eagerly seizing any offal thrown 

 out. Though not so ridiculously tame as the 

 Shearwaters, they can readily be baited up and 

 shot. One begins to find them returning from 

 the north by the middle of July. From that 

 time until the middle of October, they be- 

 come more and more plenty, at which latter 

 time, with the exception of gulls and 

 ducks, they are probably the most abundant 

 ocean birds. Most of them g'o further south 

 during the cold season, yet they are found 

 spariiigl3' off our coast all winter. Contrary to 

 the usual supposition, the Pomarine Jaeg'er 

 (Slercorariiis poDtatorhiniis) is the most abund- 

 ant of the tribe. Next conies the Parasitic 

 (S. pai-asifirus), which is common. The Long- 

 tailed or Arctic [S. hiiffotii) seems to be rather 

 scarce, to m^' knowledge. 



It IS interesting to be off-shore on a pleasant 



autumn day when Jaegers are abundant. Bai*- 

 them up around the vessel where they can be 

 observed closely, and what marvelous variation 

 is seeni Long tails, short tails, white breasts, 

 spotted breasts, plain wing's, barred wings, 

 sooty, part sootj', not sooty, large, small, 

 medium, and all the rest. One is always dis- 

 covering new "species." 



Even icy winter is a fruitful time for bird 

 studj' on old ocean. Time and space fail me 

 to descant, as I would like to do. upon the Grebes 

 Loons, Auks, Guillemots, Puffins, Gannets, 

 Cormorants, Gulls and Sea Ducks of our winter 

 fauns, A mid-winter trip to the coast has 

 fewer hardships and more delights than many 

 would suppo.se. But I doubt if an^' pleasanter 

 episode can well occur in the experience of the 

 ornithoMgist than on some mid-summer day, 

 when on shore all is hot and dustj-, the land 

 birds ragged in moult and skulking silently in 

 the thickets, to fill the lungs with the cool ocean 

 breezes off where land appears as a mere dim 

 haze, surrounded, as one often is in the right 

 place, with the varj^ing- phenomena of ocean 

 bird-life. Petrels patter over the waves, chatter- 

 ing sociably: Shearwaters g^lide gracefullj- on 

 tireless wings, or flutter greedily down to seize 

 some proffered morsel, uttering weird, wailing 

 cries; lovely unsuspicious Phalaropes ride at 

 anchor in squadrons, a miniature fleet; while 

 over all scales the voracious Jaeger, ever alert 

 to fill its maw. The agile Porpoise leaps from 

 its briny dominion, while the Finback Whale 

 spouts to the accompaniment of the cavernous 

 roaring of the tidal waves which rush from its 

 great back as it emerges. Even the veriest 

 landlubber is wont to forget himself and ex- 

 claim : 



"The life for me is the life at .sea." 



NOTES ON THE STREAKED HORNED LARK. 



By J. H. BOWLE-S, Tacoma, Wash. 



SIX miles from Tacoma, where dense woods 

 change suddenly into long stretches of 

 prairie, the Streaked Horned Lark (C)to- 

 rorvs alpi'stris sti'igata) is one of our common 

 summer residents, though peculiar in its dis- 

 tribution, large areas being almost untenanted, 

 where the conditions are to all appearances 

 perfect. This seems strange, since, half a mile 

 further, one comes upon very similar surround- 

 ings where a bird may be flushed on an average 

 of every hundred feet. The g-round they prefer 

 is at a distance from water, where the soil is 

 dry and sandy and the V'^getation consists 

 mainly of short grass, mixed with sparse 

 clumps of small prairie ferns, which grow to a 

 height of six or seven inches in large patches. 



The Larks arrive here about the fourth week 

 in March, coming suddenly in large num- 

 bers, and return to the south as soon as their 

 last broods are strong enough to stand the 

 journey, about the middle of October, or earlier, 

 when they gather in flocks of 40 or 50 and leave 

 as suddenly as thej' ca,ne. 



During the nesting season, on warm days when 

 there is no wind, the males have a very pretty 

 habit, toward evening, of soaring to a height 



of about one hundred feet, hovering for a few 

 seconds, and then fluttering down ag-ain. The 

 flight is rather slow, the motions of the wings 

 being short and quick, and, from the time the 

 bird leaves the ground until it alights, it utters 

 a low, clear and pleasant twitter. How many 

 broods a pair of these birds raise in a season I 

 cannot sa)' with certainty, but I doubt there are 

 more than two. In New England one can 

 decide, almost to a day, the date on which to 

 secure a set of eggs of almost any bird. Here 

 in Washington, however, probabl3' owing; to the 

 mildness of the climate, many birds maj- be 

 found nesting- at any time in May and June. 

 The bird under discussion is more eccentric in 

 this respect than any other; one may confidently 

 look for eggs between the first of May and the 

 last of July — how much earlier or later I am un- 

 able to state. The site selected for a nest may 

 be almost anywhere on the ground. The birds 

 usually scratch a hollow in the earth about 

 three inches deep, but occasionally place the 

 nest in the rut of a cart wheel, or the foot-print 

 of a cow or a horse. The only two nests with 

 eggs that I have taken were found bj' accident 

 ally flushing the bird while I was playing golf 



